Falling Gently
by Ferith12
Summary: Hungary does not intend to fall in love. Warnings: criminally anachronistic piano. I have no idea when any of this happens on a timeline. What even is history? I certainly don't know.


Life is a succession of moments, one following from another, small, ephemeral things, like dust blowing in the winds of time. Sometimes there are no grand turning points, no transformations. Love and growth and change occur by degrees, infinitesimally, and you are unaware of your own movement from one mode of existence to another, until the world has shifted beneath your feet, and you have found yourself somewhere new and look back.

But in that light of hindsight there are some moments suspended in memory, no more significant than those around them, perhaps, but typical of others, steps reminiscent of a journey, like lights along the path.

So, these are moments.

* * *

You are still his servant, and you hardly know him at all.

You resent him, of course you resent him. You resent his snobbish pride, his arrogance. You resent that you must serve him. You have always been proud. You resent him for having power over you. Your practicality, though, is greater than your pride. You are willing to bend and bend and bend so long as you do not break, because above all you refuse to break. And so you are willing to bow to him. Willing to reshape yourself to gain his favor, because you are determined to take from him all you can.

But, one day he is playing the piano, and you don't think anyone has ever played anything as beautifully as he does (and you resent that but you enjoy it too.) And he looks up at you and smiles a little, and says, "Thank you."

Later, in memory, you will not recall what you were doing or what he is thanking you for. It could have been any number of inconsequential things, he always is scrupulously polite.

But there is something in the way that the light hits his face, the resonance of notes fading as he pauses in his playing to speak to you. Something in the small, soft, almost-shyness of his smile that feels so genuine. You look at him in that moment and you think Oh. Oh, he's handsome, isn't he.

You feel your cheeks heat up and you duck your head down into a curtsy and hope he doesn't see, and mumble something polite and servantly to him before retreating from the room.

You have never had a crush before. It strikes you as a very silly girlish sort of affliction, and if you could choose to be attracted to anyone in such a way it certainly wouldn't be him.

* * *

It is the evening after your wedding.

The marriage is one which you are amenable to, because you hope it will grant you greater power and agency. It is a matter purely of politics, but then so are most marriages, and anything, you think, might be better than being his maid.

You are dancing with him at a ball in honor of your marriage, and you are dressed in the most beautiful and costly dress you have ever worn. Perhaps it is the dress, or the music, or your own imagination, but when he looks at you there is a light in his eyes that usually seem so distant and cold, and you think he might be in love with you.

It catches you off guard, this thought, this fancy, the possibility, though perhaps it should not. You have, after all, served him humbly, shaped yourself so as not to offend him. It is not strange, in a sense, that this self which you have created, in part to please him, since embracing your womanhood, should be a person he would fall in love with.

But you had not expected it, because before now it had never occurred to you to think of him in such a way, as a man with a heart and feelings, who might fall for a girl who cleaned his house and brought him tea, who wore embroidered aprons and a flower in her hair because she thought they were pretty.

You knew he was gentle with you because he is a gentleman, but it has not occurred to you until this moment that perhaps he likes you.

You dance. And you see the way he moves in relation to you, observe the angles of him, how he reaches to you almost reverently, the tautness and the restraint of him. He wants you, but he knows you do not reciprocate. He wants you, but he will not take you by force, not when it comes to this. He respects you.

His hands in yours are slender and smooth and soft. They are the hands of a musician and a nobleman. Your own hands are rough from washing and calloused from fighting with sword and bow. You have the hands of a woman and a warrior.

When you were a girl (or a boy) you had respect only for men who were like yourself, men whose hands told the tale of their work, whose skin was touched by dirt and sun, who could hold their own in a fight.

He is a different sort of man, one of sly intelligence and refinement. But he has a strength and cruelty of his own. Power is no less powerful for being won by treaties and marriage alliances than by the sword, and there is something to be said beauty and music as well. You have come to know him well over the time you have lived in his house, and you have learned to respect him, also.

He is a gentleman and you are a lady and you dance together. You are husband and wife, and maybe he loves you. He respects you and you respect him and that is far more than most have. If you must marry anyone, you are glad to have married him. You grant him a kiss, and he blushes comically beneath your lips.

* * *

It is after a battle with Prussia, and he is not even there.

You and Prussia are meeting together as you often do after having torn each other to pieces in battle (or in this case, after you have torn Prussia to pieces), reminiscing and boasting and telling tall soldiers' tales, and arguing tactics and strategy without ever giving away anything important, in the bright, comfortable way of old enemies who are also friends.

Your conversation wanders, and you tell Prussia a story involving Austria and a bit too much beer and your own slightly inebriated attempts to keep him from embarrassing himself entirely, and Prussia laughs until he winces with pain.

"Fuck, Erzsebet," he says, "You can't break my ribs and then tell a story like that. It's not fair."

You just grin smugly at him, "It's not my fault you're a fucking wimp."

"Fuck you," he says, eyes still laughing, and the two of you descend into a companionable silence.

But then he's looking at you, considering, in that way of his, as though he's trying to take you apart in his mind, examining you like the inner workings of machinery that he can disassemble and put together again to understand how it works and make it better.

"Do you love him?" he asks.

The question startles you, coming from nowhere as it does. He does not speak of such things, is not interested in feelings and relationships, or perhaps he is simply not adept at them. It is not the sort of question he would ask, but then again, he never fails to say what he wishes to, however indelicate.

As for you...

You are not an honest person. Your heart is your own to govern, yours immutably in a way that little else is. And it is such a complicated question asked so simply. That is just like Prussia. He is such a straight-forward person, and always demands simple answers where there are none. But you would tell him it is none of his business, because it isn't. That is what you mean to say.

Except.

Except.

Perhaps it is the blue sky above you, the green grass beneath, the golden daisy you worry between your fingers. Perhaps it is the blood under your fingernails and the warmth of triumph, the settled feeling after a satisfying battle. In moments like this your life is brought to a point, there are no important dignitaries, no matters of state, no complications. Regardless, you have always had little need for pretense with Prussia. Somehow, you are without your facade in this moment, and there is no overshadowing of what ought to be, or what might be best for your purposes, only what is. And what is is simple.

"Yes," you say, "Yes, I do."

Your heart pounds with the truth of it. It is a strange revelation, and you do not know what to do with it. Do not know where it came from, how this came to be. But you do love him. You do. It is obvious in your heart, and you do not know how you never noticed it before.

"Well shit," Prussia says, "I never took you for a madwoman." His tone is jokingly scornful, but his shoulders relax just a little. He is relieved. He is happy that you are happy, that you have not been forced into an unhappy marriage against your will all these years.

This is much more comfortable territory for you, strange as it may seem to most who know Prussia. You had not realized he was so worried for you even still, but it is not a shocking revelation.

"It's sweet of you to care so much," you say, because it is, and because you enjoy teasing him.

"Ugh," he says, wrinkling his nose up in exaggerated disgust as his cheeks grow pink in true embarrassment, "How could you? I don't believe I've been so insulted in all my life!" And you laugh at him cheerfully.

* * *

Love is such a strange thing, tossed on the careless waves of time, lost beneath the troubles and ambitions and concerns of life. Fitting in to place between waking and sleeping, growing slowly in the spaces between smiles and arguments. Moments follow moments, flitting away without trace. You look back and try to find the thread, but it is woven so skillfully into the tapestry of time, and there is no pattern for you to grasp. You love him. You cannot find the reason. Perhaps it is because he is handsome and charming, but it cannot be only that. Perhaps it is because he loves you. But you are not so kind hearted to let that sway you on its own. Perhaps love is not a thing bound to reason. Or perhaps the reasons are countless and forgotten and insignificant. Perhaps what matters is simply what is.

Austria is your husband, and he falls asleep in your arms, and you love him.


End file.
